Hi Wayne,

At the moment I use a USB US Robotics external ADSL modem. I live with my
wife and am 60 years old, she stays as far as she can away from computers,
so I cannot ever see the prospect of me wanting to connect other computers
to my system. My computer is protected from Power surges with dampers at
the plugs. I use my comp for gaming on the Internet Age of Empires and the
like.

I do not have a compelling reason to change and may well not, I am just
trying to find out about it before I make a decision. I started looking
when I suffered from persistent Internet Connection "drop offs". One of the
first things I noted was that the US robotics 8500 modem takes 500 ma and my
USB ports gives a MAX of 500 ma. I thought that was a little close for
comfort so I thought I would look at PCI. The drop offs have stopped for
some reason that I do not know, I have not changed anything on my system to
bring it about. It might be that my complaints to my ISP brought about
some change at their end, I just do not know.

To me it is simpler to have the modem in your machine out of the way. I
also understand that you get marginally better latency with a PCI modem.
Apart from that no reason what ever.


Thanks for the help

David M